The Internet has seen quite a few Xbox Next / Xbox 720 (or whatever it will end up being called) rumors over the past few months, and many gamers were likely hoping for the next generation console refresh to come in time for a holiday launch. According to Microsoft Marketing Director Cedrick Delmax; however, this is just not going to happen. Tom's Hardware quoted, from an interview with LePoint.Fr, Delmax in further stating that the "Xbox 360's cycle is not at all finished." He further tried to prove his point by saying that the Xbox 360 is not dead yet because the company did not see a need to cut the price of the current console this year. When pushed with questions about the console's competition in the Wii U (launching this Christmas season) and the eventual successor to Sony's PS3, the Microsoft spokesperson said that they would not be making any "hasty moves" and the next Xbox would come in its own time. More information including a statement from sony can be found in this separate Lepoint.fr interview.

Sticking around until at least 2013!

Well, it looks like Microsoft is really riding this horse (the Xbox 360) until it dies. Hopefully they know what they are doing and the next Xbox rises from the ashes like a Pheonix instead of crumbling because they waited too long to enter the next generation. Game developers are already starting to hit a wall in how far they can push the current consoles and will start to turn to the PC (finally) to show off their graphics prowess. What are your thoughts on this, are you satisfied with your Xbox 360, especially when compared to the graphics on current PCs (for example, Battlefield 3)?

SemiAccurate has been doing some digging into the hardware that will power the next XBox, perhaps a bit more successfully than Microsoft would like. This builds on the rumours that they had collected in December of 2011 and confirms that the next generation console is only a partial win for AMD. Oban is the code name for the CPU, which is being fabbed by GLOBALFOUNDRIES for the most part and will be a variant model of IBM's Power PC architecture and not an x86 based chip. AMD will provide a Graphics Core Next Southern Islands GPU to provide the graphical power, terrible news for NVIDIA's bottom line over the next several years as they lose out on at least one platform of the coming generation. This will continue to sting as unlike PCs, consoles are not refreshed several times over a year and the current hardware will likely be powering the XBox Next for years to come.

From what SemiAccurate has gathered, Microsoft have ordered a huge run of the chips which will power the console and should guarantee availability in the Spring of 2013 which is the current predicted release date for the console. Considering the low yields from GLOBALFOUNDRIES lately this seems likely a move to ensure that even a large amount of bad silicon will not have a major impact on their ability to provide deep supplies of XBox Next for retailers.

"If you crave more info about the upcoming XBox 720/Next, there is finally some concrete info. The one nice thing about this job is that proud parents like to talk, and that is exactly where this story begins."

The XBox Next will be another win for AMD as SemiAccurate has confirmation that the GPU portion of the console will be an AMD chip. The supplier for the CPU portion is a little less clear. SemiAccurate has it as an IBM PowerPC chip similar to the current generation which uses a Xenon processor. The newer XBox360 S used a XCGPU which was a 45nm version of the Xenon processor and an AMD Xenos GPU on the same die along with eDRAM, all wrapped up into one small package. It does make sense that Microsoft would go that route as it should make supporting the previous generation of games much easier than implementing a new architecture. It is very unlikely to be Cell based, even though that architecture shares the same PowerPC roots.

[H]ard|OCP has a dissenting opinion, or at least rumour, pegging the new XBox as a complete win for AMD. They suppose it is possible that Bulldozer might find its way into the new console along with the already known GPU core; a fully AMD designed APU. This also makes quite a bit of sense as AMD will have no trouble pairing the GPU and CPU as they've had quite a bit of practice. Plus, it gives them something to do with the Bulldozer chips.

"Yeah, basically, the chip is ‘done’, and first silicon likely went in to the oven in the last two weeks. If this is true, Microsoft should have silicon back in time to give the families of XBox systems engineers a miserable holiday season, their loved ones will be doing breakneck bring-up work on Xbox Next."